At Home on Furlough. Second series

Front matter

*E-PR£**-JTED FROM THE *•** MADRAS MAIL." (jS^mtit Jteriis,) BY CHARLES A. LAWSON. ''-Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said This is my own, my native land ! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'ct, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wandering on a foreign strand." SCOTT. MADRAS: THE "MADRAS MAIL" PRESS, 1875, THIS VOLUME OF ROUNDABOUT PAPERS IS INSCRIBED BO yOmai Iroitfc* Whose " Sweetness and Light" CONDUCED TO THE PLEASURE AND PROFIT OF THE AUTHOR'S HOLIDAY. Habeas, 31sf March 1875. CONTENTS. Letter. Page, I. P. $ 0. life.— Hip Van Winkle— Time Flies— Growlers- Canal Steamers — A Glass Hive — Outfits 1 II. Two Services on Board. — The P. & O. Sunday — Sermons at Sea — Ocean Sorting — Marine Postal Service 8 III. The P. 4* 0. Executive.— The Fleet— Officers— Stewards and Stewardesses — Stores — Crews 17 IV.

Precautions against Disasters. — Panic — Drill — Preventable Accidents — Native Crews — Retrenchment 28 V. Suez. — Its Past — Present — Trade — Future — The Canal — The Euphrates Valley Project — Eussia 35 VI. Malta. — Influence of the Suez Canal — Valetta — The Government — People and Products 45 VII. Southampton.— Arrival— Docks— The Town— P. & 0. Workshops — " Via Falmouth" 51 VIII. The Fair County of Kent.— A Wintry Spring— Comforts of Home — Chislehurst — Napoleon III 56 IX. Village Rambles.— Queen's weather— The Common— West Wickham — Bickley — Enviable Existence 61 X. The Development of Puffs. — Excessive advertising — Newspaper puffery— Penny trumpets— Street posters 69 XI. Metropolitan Minor Organs.— The " Zetetic"— " Pro and Con"— " Matrimonial News"— Syrens for sale 75 XII. Pome More London Publications.— " The Exchange and Mart"— "The Devil"—" Here and There" CONTENTS.

Letter. Page. XIII. Metropolitan Pleasure Grounds. — Bethnal Green — Victoria Park — Battersea — People's Parks — Flower Shows 93 XIV. In Queen. Victoria Street— The " Times" Office— The Bible Society — Bethnal Green Museum — Workman's Club 102 XV. The Isle of Thanet. — Ramsgate — St. Lawrence on Sea — Minster — Broadstairs — Margate — Herne Bay Ill XVI. Selbome.— Gilbert White— His Life— Church— Rectory— "Natural History" — Blackmoor — Lord Selborne 119 XVII. Tichborne.— " Sir Roger"— The Village— The House— The Church— Local opinion — The real Baronet 126 XVIII. Winchester.— The Bishops— The College— "The trusty servant' ' — The Executive — FaggiBg — Slang 132 XIX. Sandhurst. — Rural retreats — The Military College — Firs wid Heather— Bagshot— The Staff College 142 XX. An Albert Memorial. — Near Blackwater — Collingwood Asylum — Admission — National Memorials 151 XXI.

Letter I. Lights And Shades Of

P. & O. LIFE. Bajbelmandeb, March 1873. When Rip Van Winkle returned from his memorable trip to the Hills to his residence in the plains, he was pained by the discovery that the faces of friends and relatives which had been young on his setting forth, had grown wrinkled, and their locks had turned grey in the interval. In no such unpleasant manner is the veteran voyager reminded by the Peninsular and Oriental Company of the march of that " old thief," time. True, a grey hair in his favourite whisker; ominous signs of threatening baldness; or worse, a crow's-foot, or two, beside his once brighter eyes, may be reflected in the maple-framed, oblong glass over the plugged basin in which, with some acrobatic effort, he per forms a portion of his ablutions ; but, the vessel in which he travels in 1873 is perhaps only, by a severe examination, found to differ in any other respect than tonnage from the steamer which carried him to the land of unredeemed promise in the "gorgeous East" ten or twenty years ago.

The berths and saloon furniture; the bed-room and table crockery ; the glass and linen; the stewards and steward esses; the cooks and engineers; the lascars and John China- AT HOME ON FURLOUGH. [LETT. I. men; the sailors and those who command them; seem the facsimiles of his surroundings when, as a griffin, he hoped all things from a brief exile from the land of his birth. He cannot, perhaps, conceal from himself the chronological fact that a decade, or two, immediately following twenty years of age, usually represents the most sanguine, healthful, active, and progressive period in the lives of Anglo- Indians; and that, whether he has made the most of his time in India, or not, he has lived it, and can live it again no more. He is individually older, and, unlike Mr. R. V. Winkle, he knows it; but the P. and 0. being blessed with an unending youth, the old passenger returns complacently to the discipline that amused him in days when he himself was young, and takes up the thread of his inter-oceanic life as easily as though he dropped it yesterday.

His many anxieties while in India ; his weeks and months of mono tonous routine duty ; his somewhat morbid craving at times for rest; seem now little else than the "baseless fabrics of a dream ;" and he finds it far more easy to realise the fact that he is returning to the familiar scenes of his youth at home, than to recall with any connectedness the unevent ful labours of his manhood abroad. The Canal steamers have merits of their own which he who puts them to the test can only adequately appreciate ; but, so long as the P. and 0. Company continue to deserve well of my country, shall I feel anxious to entrust myself and those I love to its care, rather than to that of any rival with which I have yet become acquainted. Yet one invariably meets with passengers who will not be comforted by any of the blandishments of the P. and O., and who, with painful verbosity din into the ears of their unfortunate table or cabin companions their singularly fresh opinions respecting the chronic mismanagement of the great Com pany.

As gentlemen and ladies of this way of thinking are numerous in India, I will not venture to risk their displeasure by hinting that some of their growls are not free from LETT. I.] THE GROWLERS. 3 exaggeration. To individuals with an abnormally sensitive cuticle, crumpled rose leaves may be fatal to sound slumber; and it would be unfeeling of the person whose own skin is of coarser texture to argue that his less fortunate associates do not do well by being angry with such foliage. So the circumstance that the P. and 0. life is congenial to my taste when afloat is one that affects not the eloquent arguments of the critics whom the P. and 0. Directorate probably despair of pleasing. It seems to me that enjoying the society of a hundred, or so, ladies and gentlemen, a good proportion of w*horn are agreeable ; and sharing with them the not incon siderable advantages of varied and fresh food in great abundance, attentive servants, and a cabin that, like the ship, is habitually clean ; with an unlimited amount of salt water for bathing purposes ; and sea air whose ozone is beyond all suspicion — it seems to me, I say, that there is very little left for me to wish for ; and yet I needs must lend a listening ear at table, or on the deck, or still worse in my cabin to the lamentations of some of my fellow-travellers over there being " really nothing to eat."

It must, however, be borne in mind that the five Steam Navigation Companies whose ways of doing things for the comfort of passengers between Europe and India, I have from time to time, as a passenger, personally scrutinised, do not comprise the whole of the Agencies that have of late years bidden for a share of the Anglo-Indian passenger traffic ; and there must, judging from the caustic remarks of a percentage of P. and 0. passengers, be some Company in existence, unknown to myself, which they have found equal to the enormous task of pleasing all the appetites and caprices of a crowd of unavoidably idle folk on board-ship. Is it not however, somewhat strange, that the persons who are loudest in their disparagement of the P. and 0. are found in P. and 0. ships at all ; and that when you come to enquire into their position in India you are usually told that their reputed incomes are in an inverse ratio to their profuse com- AT HOME ON FURLOUGH. [LETT.

I. plaints 1 A young Lord whose rent-roll will, it is believed, be a million sterling when he is forty years of age, and who, therefore, may be supposed to possess steam-yachts of his own, or to be on intimate terms with those who have them, or, failing this, who could well afford to charter a steamer on his own account, as the Irishman did before the Deluge, is not only content to journey to and from India in P. and O. vessels, like any other man, but, judging from his tri-daily performances with knife and fork, considers the fare excellent, and shows a cheeriness on deck which argues that he finds the society with which he is boxed up for nearly a month by no means uncongenial. Not so, however, the censor who having, unlike the nobleman, been nursed in the lap of luxury, founds his claims to temporary import ance on his ability to sneer at "this confounded ship."

Yet, to humour his companions at table, not by any means to please himself, does this representative gentleman, deign to do even more than justice to the " abominable victuals" get before him. It is greatly, therefore, to his credit that he plays to the life a part that must to a man of his great refinement and delicate palate be repugnant ; and that he does something, in a practical kind of way, towards letting his fellow-passengers nurse the delusion that though he habitually revels in the choicest luxuries of the season and locality when ashore, the P. and 0. makeshifts are not so immediately fatal to life as to render it impossible for him to partake of them with the semblance of a hearty appetite. But, ship-board is not generally favorable to the development of the more noble phases of landsman character : and it would, therefore, be unjust to gauge Anglo-Indian nature by the standard of P. and O. passengers.

To men who are among the busiest of official bees ashore, a month of abstinence from active duties cannot be other than tedious, except when physical health is in sore need of absolute rest. The pettinesses of passenger life, and more especially the LETT. I.] A GLASS HIVE. 5 chronic selfishness of some folk, are not, perhaps, calculated to give keen neutral observers, who have had no personal experience of the conditions of life in the East, a high opinion of Anglo-Indians; and hence it is that Troll ope in his "Bertrams" employs his pen in depicting that marked blemish of P. and 0. life, the widow in search of a husband, rather than in more kindly portraits of his countrymen in exile. So, too, in London newspapers, reviews and magazines one frequently meets with sneering references to Anglo- Indians, based evidently on the experience acquired by metropolitan satirists on a journey with some of them to or from Egypt.

Indian passengers, as a rule, as do gentlemen in their cups, usually exhibit the relatively weak rather than the relatively strong points of their character ; or, at any rate, the opportunity is not favorable for the exhibition of those finer traits which, let us hope, command the admiration of their friends, and the respect of their foes ashore. The wonder therefore is, not that each ship is fruitful of a little piece of pseudo-scandal, but that scandals are com paratively insignificant and rare on board. In a company of one to two hundred ladies and gentlemen, none of whom have any more important daily function than to eat, drink, and pass away the time, there will usually be a small per centage who find amusement in Platonic preferences ; but home critics are too apt to forget that these individuals are really no worse than many dilly-dallying people ashore, whose acts, being comparatively private, furnish but little food for conversation.

A crowded passenger steamer is a glass hive in which there is a large preponderance of drones who are driven, for want of any better amusement, to bite one another's tails. The familiarity that often breedeth contempt is not to be avoided on board by even the most haughty official ; and passengers are brought down to a dead level which is probably somewhat repugnant to the feelings of bright and particular stars of certain public services, who there- AT HOME ON FURLOUGH. [LETT. I. fore do their best to enact the part of wet blankets. It is probably rare to make friendships on board that last longer than the end of the voyage ; but he would be indeed an unfortunate or objectionable creature who has made several P. & O. journeys without also making several valued additions to his list of acquaintances.

If disagreeable people ashore are very disagreeable as cabin companions, nice people ashore are usually found to be very nice on board, health and weather permitting. It is no small advantage after being bound hand and foot to a desk in some part of India, with intimacies, out of officehours, confined to a small set of excellent people whose shrewd opinions on most topics are pretty well known to you, to be thrown for a few weeks, without any formal social constraint, among a crowd of homeward-bound fellow-exiles representing a variety of occupations and interests in localities unknown to yourself. True, it may be well that the journey lasts only a few weeks, for the most amiable souls could not be reasonably expected to endure without some moral detriment a more protracted tax on their patience, such for example as that connected with a voyage of six dreadful months round the Cape, as of old.

We moderns, if we would only reckon them up, may well congratulate ourselves on the enormous advantages, tantamount to individual blessings, that have been heaped upon our generation ; and we Anglo-Indians may well, at the termination of each voyage, feel grateful that the ends of the world have in our time been brought together, and that a P. and 0. journey is what it is. We all know that there are sunbeams in cucumbers, sermons in stones, stones in plum jam, and nuts in Proceed ings of Government, but we all do not know that there are reflections grave and gay to be extracted from the outfit of fellow-passengers, and also from one's own apparel. People have so little to do that is worth the doing on board ship in the happily brief intervals between meals, that the LETT. I.] THE OUTFIT OF PASSENGERS. 7 man who sports a fantastic suit, or the lady who wears an amazing chignon, with a panier to match, is a benefactor of his or her species, by affording food for the refreshment of vacant minds.

There is the vanity of being well dressed, to which some griffins outward-bound are martyrs ; and there is the vanity of being dressed regardless of appearances, to which some old Indians of both sexes homeward-bound do not rise superior. The latter weakness, if not the more conducive to picturesqueness, is the more provocative of con versation unalloyed by latent jealousy ; and I have not yet ceased to marvel at the forms in which it finds expression. In the early morning, before the ladies make their appear ance, and ere masculine ablutions have commenced, the males assemble pretty numerously in the forward saloon, or on deck, the majority wearing costumes that might strike their home relatives with surprise, mingled it may be with awe. The Bengalees affect large, loose, embroidered, snuff-coloured, goat's hair dressing-gowns, which when swaddled around them make the owners resemble perambulating parcels of a large size per pattern post.

The Bombayites are not so partial to cashmere, and would seem to prefer suits of gaudily coloured flannel, to the grey shirtings in which the Madrassees take the morning air. These ante-breakfast costumes are reluctantly made to give place to the attire for the day, which in many instances nearly approaches the normal costume of the British plumber when on duty, or that petted master of the situation, that " 'orny 'anded son of toil," the British working man. If the wearers are intent upon concealing their identity as officers of rank, or civilians of standing, they succeed to a marvel in carrying their point ; and it is as good as a play to find day after day that this or that shabby-looking gentleman is not a deported loafer, but one of whom his country and service may well be proud. AT HOME ON FURLOUGH. [LETT. II.

Letter II. Two Services On Board

The Red Sea, March 1873. The P. and 0. Sunday has marked characteristics. The cards and the quoits, the chess and the draughts, the cribbage and the lotteries of week-days are laid by, and the passengers momentarily discard the use of the seediest of coats, and the most draggled of polonaises. The parsons, especially the facetious ones, affect to eat their breakfast with some austerity of demeanour, and even exhibit an abnormal indisposition to indulge in jam. Their wives are similarly abstemious in the consumption of marmalade, for fear, may be, of impairing their ability to lead the singing. The post-breakfast cheroot is furtively indulged in by most of the men ; and only the reprobates dare to study the British classics bound in illustrated yellow covers. Anon the crew is mustered — and peppered too, should they present themselves in other than the cleanest of attire.

The European seamen are brawny, as well they may be, seeing that they fare sumptuously, for sailors, every day. The Chinese, got up regardless of expense in the traditional costume of the British Tar, look like the latter hero may be supposed to do when tarred, feathered, shaved, and starved. The Lascars, for a wonder, put in a clean appearance ; but their faces are not very prepossessing, and it is some comfort to reflect that the number of well-built European stewards should be sufficient to keep them in order should they ever feel tempted to "run a moock" at a trying period in the vessel's history. LETT. II.] DIVINE SERVICE ON BOARD. 9 The sharp quarter-deck bell now tolls ; the bigger and richer toned bell at midships replies ; and the little floating world is informed that Divine service is about to be performed.

The deck has been already prepared for the purpose by the judicious re-arrangement of the hardest of benches, and the turning of spider and other lounging chairs to the irreverent rear. A brace of stewards stagger forwards, each with a tray full, not of P. and 0. mutton, or P. and 0. stew, or P. and 0. crockery, but of P. and O. Bibles and Prayer Books ; and the passengers hasten to arm themselves with these aids to memory. The Captain, in his best suit of uniform, the buttons as bright as a mirror, now steps forth from his cabin on the deck, and no more says a " Good morning" to his lady, or " How are you this morning" to his gentlemen subjects ; but takes a foremost seat with a mien significant of sonorous Amens. Now approach two reverend Signiors, the one a Missionary given on week days to mild jokes, the other a Senior Chaplain, whose copious beard had hitherto concealed his holy calling, or, to be more accurate, his neck-cloth, from the eyes of his fellow-passengers.

Robed in flowing surplices, with hood and all, these worthy ecclesiastics strike the congregation with awe ; and each passenger assumes a decorous demeanour that is somewhat foreign, perhaps, to the character of specimens of "frivolous literature" that peep over the edges of coat-pockets, as though surprised at finding themselves in such good company. " Hats off ;" and while the clergymen indulge in brief devotions on their own account, by way of preface, the elderly passengers moralise on the disadvantage of having no thatch on the top of their heads whereby to moderate the intensity of the sun's rays, which is felt even through the thick double canvas awning. The service now commences, and is conducted with an heroic zeal, which only those can adequately appreciate who attempt with giddy heads, feeble stomachs, and totter- AT HOME ON FURLOUGH. [LETT.

II. 10 ing legs to stand in one position on deck for a quarter of an hour at a time, and to read aloud while the vessel is "rolling rapidly." The prayers and hymns ended, there follows a sermon, which half of the congregation usually do not, and the other half cannot hear. Sermons ashore are sometimes the dryest of intellectual products ; but they are never so dreary as when listened to on the quarter-deck of a steamer in a rough sea, while one's head aches again from unusual exposure to the "maximum solar heat in vacuo." It is some consolation, however, to find that the preacher is not himself blind to the desirability of brevity, though his final "Now" is not uttered before the brains of his hearers are somewhat addled. Then another hymn ; the concluding blessing; and the congregation rise; pro duce novels and cheroots, and feel conscious of an unusual appetite for tiffin after the spinal rectitude of the morn.

Tiffin over, an afternoon unrelieved by pastimes of a primitive description, ensues. What wonder that with one consent, the passengers either on the deck in somewhat con torted attitudes, or in their rsspective berths, in airy costume, woo sleep, and are rewarded with indigestion. Once more do eight bells sound ; once more do the brave and fair resume vertical positions in the world ; once more do they trot up and down the deck like carnivora at the Zoological Gardens when feeding time draws nigh. Dinner is at last announced, and conscious virtue rewards itself with a good one. An evening service sometimes follows, and is sparsely attended, the congregation of tobacco votaries around the engine sky lights being a too formidable rival. There being nothing to do after tea in the way of games, the passengers mostly go early to bed, and find that having drawn largely on their sleep account during the day, there is not a large balance at their credit.

This balance, with such celerity as is permitted by ubiquitous stewards and noisy neighbours, they draw, and find themselves broad awake by three o'clock, with nothing to do but to wait for the dawn. LETT. II.] SERMONS AT SEA. 11 How comes it that clergymen on board ship often preach on a variety of theological topics without pointing a moral by allusions to their surroundings ? In this vessel we have five padres, who take it in turn to read prayers daily, and to preach morning and evening on Sundays ; yet they have not once employed, as Dr. Vaughan, among others, succeeds in doing, " local contemporary events as a means of illustrating Divine truth." They have prosed to us of mysteries of which their own knowledge is rather elementary ; they have indulged freely in wither ing sarcasm at the expense of that bete noir of the pulpit, — the worldling ; they have heaped metaphor on metaphor, dogma on dogma ; and as no one has enjoyed the right of reply, they have probably, as they divested themselves of their canonicals in their cabins, plumed them selves on their eloquence.

But they have not, — as Dr. Norman Macleod did when I last travelled in a P. and 0. ship, — discovered forcible similes between a voyage at sea, and the voyage of life ; nor have they felt prompted by proximity to Arabia, Sinai, the Red Sea, and Egypt, to cease for a time their conventional chatter in order to talk common sense, and give good practical advice. I wish I could add that my reverend neighbours have atoned for their Sabbattical futility by laudable atten tion to the sick and dying, such as Norman Macleod would have shown under similar circumstances. We have had three deaths on board, namely, those of a young European female servant, and of two stewards in the P. and 0. service from Australia, homeward-bound. One of these stewards was a Roman Catholic, and when the appoint ed service of his church was impressively read over him by the boiler-maker, the only co-religionist of his on board, the Protestant ecclesiastics were, I am sorry to say, conspicuous by their absence.

No one could have wished these gentle men to run the risk of scandalising the feelings of the unfortunate man's friends by officiating at his funeral, and [LETT. II. 12 AT HOME ON FURLOUGH. reading the Anglican burial service, unrivalled though it is in charity, resignation, and hope, over him ; but the lay passengers felt there could have been no impropriety in any clergymen of any denomination assisting, as we laymen did, in last sad offices for a fellow-being that are consonant with humanity and piety. Were Protestant clergymen more alive to their own interests as connected with the maintenance of their legitimate influence with the laity, they would take more pains to " live in charity with all men," including Romanists, instead of being as now " more than kin and less than kind" towards the latter.

This, however, may be urged in extenuation of the remissness of my clerical fellow travellers, that " the cloth" when afloat, does not rise wholly superior to the deterioration resulting from enforced idleness, and a somewhat uncongenial mode of life. The performance of Church service on board ship reminds me of another service, the Marine Postal, which is conducted in hot haste for the benefit of all India, in mail steamers speeding from Suez to Bombay. This postal service is of some years standing, but it is new to me, though I have long been under obligations to it. In 1867 or 1868, the mails for India were partly sorted in London, on the eve of despatch, the assortment being not so complete as to relieve the Indian Post Offices from much subsidiary work. The arrangement entailed an unavoidable loss of time, both in England and India, and the experiment was tried of sorting a portion of the mails while on the outward voyage.

This proving successful, a number of young gentlemen, some of them sons of Colonels, others of Chaplains in the Indian service, were selected, and formed into the Marine Postal Department of the Bombay Post Office ; and the services of the Admiralty Agents whom one formerly met on board, were dispensed with. ''No passenger was ever perhaps so fortunate as to discover that those Agents, after having tallied the mail boxes, and given a receipt for their delivery, had any more arduous duties to perform than to make love LETT. II.] OCEAN-SORTING OF MAILS. 13 to the ladies, and assert a right to liver-wings, under cuts, and other tit-bits at table. The lot of the Marine Postal Officers is not cast in such pleasant places, for it is obligatory on them to commence their monotonous work at six in the morning, and they dare not suspend it till the dressing bell sounds at 4-30 p. m. A commodious office is provided for them on deck at midships, and is furnished with office paraphernalia, excluding chairs or tables.

The work is usually entrusted to two officers, one of whom is held responsible for the receipt and delivery of the bags, as well as for the correct assortment of the contents. •-The bags being duly placed on board by the packet agent at Suez, to whom a receipt is given, are methodically opened, and the letters and newspapers are thrown with the rapidity resulting from arduous practice, into labelled pigeon-holes, or into sacks suspended from hooks. The sorters are required to possess an accurate knowledge of Indian postal geography ; and the acquirement of this with the manual dexterity that is also essential, is not compassed within half-a-year. The work goes on regularly day by day, including Sundays, when the mail is heavy, during the fortnight occupied by the voyage from Suez to Bombay, and on arrival at the latter port the responsible officer takes his precious charge ashore, makes delivery to the Post Office, and — his occupation is gone, till his turn comes to start afresh for Suez.

Between Bombay and Suez the sorting is regarded as child's play, for it only extends to letters posted with an extra stamp after the ordinary hour for closing the mails in Bombay, and to letters for the Continent. The apportionment of the Marine Postal officer's time is consequently usually as follows : a fortnight's voyage to Suez with just enough work to do to occupy half the day ; five day's idleness at Suez ; a fortnight's voyage to Bombay, working from early morn to dewy eve, against time ; and then ten days' idleness in Bombay, followed by AT HOME ON FURLOUGH. [LETT. II. 14 another voyage to Suez, and so round again./ To not a few hard-worked officials in India, this may at first blush appear to be a desirable life for an unambitious man who is fond of society, and not partial to head work.

It is true that, for about two thirds of the year, the Postal Officer associates intimately with the shining lights, or lesser luminaries of the Indian military, civil, mercantile, and other worlds, and may gain by frequently retailing his stock jokes and anecdotes, a reputation for being very agreeable among hosts of passengers, with whom he partici pates on equal terms in the triumphs of P. and 0. culinary art. And for the remaining third, he is the occupant of modest quarters at a Bombay hotel. But the father must be at his wit's end for an opening for his son, when he exhorts him to compete for the postal service on the high seas in India. j~- The pay, to begin with, is miserablel The Department is divided into three grades, the first, in which there are two men drawing Rs. 400 each ; the second, with five men drawing Rs. 300 each ; and a subordinate grade, comprising two Senior Assistant Mail Officers on Rs. 190, five Assistant Mail Officers on Rs. 150, and two Supernumeraries on Rs. 60 each per mensem.